I thought I would give a comment by a poster with the handle “ericB” a little more publicity as it was buried deep in an old thread where it was unlikely to be seen by passing “materialists / evolutionists”.
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Calling all evolutionists / materialists! Your help is needed! Alan Fox has not been able to answer a particular challenge, but perhaps you know an answer.
The issue is simple and the bar is purposely set low. The question is whether there exists one or more coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system by unguided chemicals.
The translation system in cells indicates intelligent design. I would submit that, regardless of how many billions of years one waited, it is not reasonable to expect that unguided chemicals would ever construct a system for translating symbolic information into functional proteins based on stored recipes and a coding convention.
[I realize people have thoughts about what happened earlier (e.g. that might not need proteins, for example) and what happened later (e.g. when a functioning cell provides the full benefits of true Darwinian evolution). For the purposes here, attention is focused specifically on the transition from a universe without symbolic translation to construct proteins to the origin of such a system. Whatever happened earlier or later, sooner or later this bridge would have to be crossed on any path proposed to lead to the cells we see now.]
One of the key considerations leading to this conclusion is that a translation system depends upon multiple components, all of which are needed in order to function.
+ Decoding
At the end, one needs the machinery to implement and apply the code to decode encoded symbolic information into its functional form. (In the cell, this is now the ribosome and supporting machinery and processes, but the first instance need not be identical to the current version.) Without this component, there is no expression of the functional form of what the symbolic information represents. The system as a whole would be useless as a translation system without this. Natural selection could not select for the advantages of beneficial expressed proteins, if the system cannot yet produce any. A DVD without any player might make a spiffy shiny disk, but it would be useless as a carrier of information.
+ Translatable Information Bearing Medium
There must be a medium that is both suitable for holding encoded information and that is compatible with the mechanism for decoding. Every decoding device imposes limitations and requirements. It would be useless to a DVD player if your video was on a USB thumb drive the DVD player could not accept instead of a suitable disk. In the cells we see, this is covered by DNA and ultimately mRNA.
+ Meaningful Information Encoded According to the Same Coding Convention
One obviously needs to have encoded information to decode. Without that, a decoding mechanism is useless for its translation system purpose. If you had blank DVDs or DVDs with randomly encoded gibberish or even DVDs with great high definition movies in the wrong format, the DVD player would not be able to produce meaningful results, and so would have no evolutionary benefit tied to its hypothetical but non-functioning translation abilities. In the cell, this information holds the recipes for functional proteins following the same encoding convention implemented by the ribosome and associated machinery.
+ Encoding Mechanisms
This is perhaps the least obvious component, since the cell does not contain any ability to create a new store of encoded protein recipes from scratch. Indeed, this absence is part of the motivating reasons for the central dogma of molecular biology. Nevertheless, even if this capability has disappeared from view, there would have to be an origin and a source for the meaningful information encoded according to the same coding convention as is used by the decoding component.
(For the moment, I will just note in passing that the idea of starting out with random gibberish and running the system until meaningful recipes are stumbled upon by accident is not a viable proposal.)
So there has to be some source capable of encoding, and this source must use the same coding convention as the decoding component. To have a working, beneficial DVD player, there must also be a way to make a usable DVD.
+ Meaningful Functional Source Material to Represent
It would do absolutely no good to have the entire system in place, if there did not also exist in some form or other a beneficial “something” to represent with all this symbolic capability. If you want to see a movie as output, there needs to be a movie that can be encoded as input. If you want functional proteins as output, there needs to be access to information about proper amino acid sequences for functional proteins that can serve as input. Otherwise, GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. If there is no knowledge of what constitutes a sequence for a functional protein, then the result produced at the end of the line would not be a functional protein.
+ Some Other Way To Make What You Want The System To Produce
If we supposed that the first movie to be encoded onto a DVD came from being played on a DVD player, we would clearly be lost in circular thinking, which does not work as an explanation for origins. Likewise, if the only way to produce functional proteins is to get them by translating encoded protein recipes, that reveals an obvious problem for explaining the origin of that encoded information about functional proteins. How can blind Nature make a system for producing proteins, if there has never yet been any functional proteins in the universe? On the other hand, how does blind Nature discover and use functional proteins without having such a system to make them?
The core problem is that no single part of this system is useful as a translation system component if you don’t have the other parts of the system. There is nowhere for a blind process to start by accident that would be selectable toward building a translation system.
The final killer blow is that chemicals don’t care about this “problem” at all. Chemicals can fully fulfill all the laws of chemistry and physics using lifeless arrangements of matter and energy. Chemicals are not dissatisfied and have no unmet goals. A rock is “content” to be a rock. Likewise for lifeless tars.
The biology of cells needs chemistry, encoded information, and translation, but chemicals do not need encoded information or biology. They aren’t trying to become alive and literally could not care less about building an encoded information translation system.
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I’m hoping ericB will find time to respond to any comments his challenge might elicit.
hotshoe,
Did you find the definition of a code?
Alan Fox and Elizabeth Liddle deny the facts set forth by Yockey,
Skeptics or Ideologues?
It’s clearly not plagiarism, since Mung doesn’t make any pretense that it was his own work, but that garbage Mung just quoted definitely gets a CITATION REQUIRED.
I believe the original source is the whackaloon Perry Marshall at Cosmic fingerprints
Ooooh, cosmic!
I will say one tiny thing in Perry’s favor – when he copied Yockey’s diagram, he did it without permission but at least didn’t steal it outright: he did credit Yockey by name and date.
The fact that Mung copies the deranged Perry and pretends he’s an authority … priceless.
ericB,
Yes, and Mung also didn’t say anything about whether or not ID/immaterialism/Creationism provides any “coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system” by intelligent causes. I would have thought that if one is going to deem a real scientific theory inadequate on the grounds that it does not provide an explanation for a given thing, one ought not support an alternative which is equally devoid of explanations for that thing. However, Creationists obviously differ with me on this point. [shrug] C’est la vie.
Sure—any set of thingies, be they “all causes” or whatever else, can be subdivided into whatever set of categories a body cares to subdivide them into. If you want to do this in the context of science, the question is whether or not the set of categories you’re using can help understand what’s going on in the Real World—whether the set of categories in question is a valid reflection of Reality As She Is Spoke, or, instead, merely a reflection of some arbitrary notion bouncing around inside the head of the guy what did the categorizing.
In this case, I’m not at all sure that your category of “undirected or unguided natural process causes” is particularly helpful, because you’ve defined that category in negative terms, i.e. by what isn’t true of items in said category. There is certainly precedent for that sort of thing in real biology; the taxon “invertebrates” is defined in terms of not possessing a backbone. But when you define a category in terms of what it’s not, you run the risk that your negatively-defined category is a taxonomical ‘junk drawer’, an untidy pile of arbitrary whatzits which don’t really have anything to do with one another, and the lack of commonality possessed by inhabitants of the ‘junk drawer’ category makes it difficult (if not impossible) to draw any conclusions about. The taxon “invertebrates”, which includes everything from sponges to starfish to spiders and then some, is a perfect example of the problem I refer to. If the only thing you know about a critter is that it’s an invertebrate, the only thing you can say about that critter is… that it doesn’t have a backbone.
Not exactly helpful, is it? You might as well not even bother with that negatively-defined “invertebrate” taxon in the first place!
Similarly, if the only thing you know about a particular cause is that it belongs to your negatively-defined “non-intelligent cause” category, the only thing you can say about that cause is… um… that it didn’t involve any intelligence. You can’t say anything about how that cause operates, nor what sort of signs to look for that would indicate that that cause was in operation, nor anything else. Again, it’s a negatively-defined ‘junk drawer’ category; again, you might as well not have even bothered to invoke that negatively-defined category in the first place.
Yep. If it is, indeed, “not reasonable to find the cause for some effect within category one”, then it follows that “one should reasonably expect the cause to be in category two”.
If it’s not in the ‘junk drawer’, then it’s somewhere outside of the ‘junk drawer’.
If.
You’re making a hypothetical argument here. Care to demonstrate that said hypothetical has any bearing on Reality As She Is Spoke? Absent such a demonstration, I don’t see why real scientists should give a damn about your hypothetical argument.
I’m sure that “some” are indeed “locked in by their presuppositions”. After you’re finished pointing out that these locked-into-their-presuppositions people (whoever they may be) are, indeed, locked into their presuppositions, perhaps you might care to address the criticisms of people who aren’t locked into their own presuppositions?
Why would it not “[be] reasonable to find the cause of translation systems in category one”? Category-one explanations are known to work just fine for some parts of biology (i.e., the origin of amino acids, and some biochemical functions); why, then, should anybody switch gears to think that that category-one explanations don’t work for all parts of biology?
Okay, “all parts of biology which contemporary humans haven’t left their fingerprints on”. You know what I mean.
Now, if you want to argue that the current absence of category-one explanations for translation systems is a valid reason for thinking that translation systems just don’t have a category-one explanation, fine—but if that’s your argument, you damn well need to pony up a category-two explanation for translation systems. Because if an absence of category-one explanations for translation systems is valid grounds for concluding that such category-one explanations simply don’t exist, then an absence of category-two explanations for translation systems is valid grounds for concluding that such category-two explanations simply don’t exist. I suppose someone who’s locked into the presupposition that it’s gotta be an intelligent cause, it’s just gotta be! wouldn’t care that their pro-ID reasoning is a two-edged sword that cuts ID down in the same stroke with which it cuts real science down, but you’re not one of those locked-in people… are you, ericB?
So.
Why did you post a challenge under which your preferred not-a-theory, ID, doesn’t fare any better than the real-science theory you reject?
The facts set forth by Yockey include the fact that the genetic code did evolve by [unguided] purely chemical processes.
Why are you trying to deny that fact?
When you have an answer to the question of why you’re in denial, then we’ll talk about “code” or “not-code”.
Very true, Mung. Now, could you tell me what “coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system” are provided by Creationism/non-materialism/ID?
cubist:
So? You and I both know that was not what was requested.
the original request:
Quite right, my original request was ill-formed. Now, would you care to explain what “coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system” are provided by ID/Creationism/immaterialism?
hotshoe:
otoh, your opinion is worthless.
Mung,
Why do you keep ignoring the youtube video I linked? It gives an in principle explanation for how a translation system and the genetic code could have evolved from no code at all.
Mung,
Here it is again:
cubist:
I do not deign to speak for undefined categories. But there are many instances of translations systems we can refer to.
Morse Code
ASCII
As a programmer, I heartily accept this assertion. But where is the theoretical and experimental proof, and where is the relevance to Darwinism?
The OP asks, “The question is whether there exists one or more coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system by unguided chemicals.” Under the definition of “translation system” used in the question in the OP, what “coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system” are provided by ID/Creationism/immaterialism?
I’m not sure that either Morse Code or ASCII qualifies as a “translation system” under the definition used in the question which was asked in the OP. Be that as it may, neither Morse Code nor ASCII is the creation of some nebulous, ill-defined “intelligence”; rather, both Morse Code and ASCII are the creations of human intelligence. Can you identify any instances of a “translation system” that was created by a non-human intelligence? If you can’t, either (a) it follows that the “translation system” referred to in the OP was created by a human intelligence, or else (b) it follows that the “translation system” referred to in the OP was created by something that has never been observed, a ‘something’ which, by ID/Creationist standards, is therefore completely lacking in evidence to support its existence.
I have deep reservations about drawing anaolgies between cellular “translation” systems and Morse code or ASCII
In Morse and ASCII, encoder/transmitter and decoder/receiver have agreed a series of purely arbitrary representations of they could agreee alphabet etc. At any time they could agree between a local variation purely for use between themselves, and which would render an encoded message udecipherable to anyone with knowledge of the original code
Codons have not been arbitrarily chosen. No intelligence decided “these three nucleotides shall be a symbol for this nucleic acid”
Or at least there is no evidence that this happened, and a certain amount of evidence that cellular translation and transcrrption pathways are evolved chemistry.
Can anyone else spot the flaw in logic here? Essentially, Yockey is so shocked by the presence of a code translation system at the root of biological systems, and finds it so incompatible with non-organic physico-chemical interactions, that he believes it may be something that simply cannot ever be understood by humans; there may be something involved that humans simply cannot comprehend.
Yet, he prefaces that by insisting that if we could actually follow the history of the origin and evolution of life, it would prove to be a purely chemical process. How can that conclusion possibly be extrapolated from such an admission except via materialist ideology so deep it is willing to postulate that nature has implausible laws that lie outside of human capacity to reason?
Simply provide a compelling alternative!
That, really, is all it would take.
And yes, is it so difficult to understand that mere humans have not fully understood nature?
It seems to me that the sin of pride is yours, for you are saying that “I have understood this universe to such a degree that I know without doubt that life could not have started with a ‘purely chemical process'”.
Whereas the pragmatic scientists simply note which explanation is currently more plausible. And, right now, “purely chemical” has many data points whereas “poof – there it is” has a grand total of zero. And so it is therefore the current best explanation. That life had a chemical origin.
It’s not an ideology that drives this conclusion. It’s reality. You are perfectly able to disagree with this conclusion, but of course you are not disagreeing on the basis of evidence (after all, there is none for “poof” except your personal incredulity”) and as such your “arguments” are rather irrelevant.
I would suggest that you do not fully understand Quantum physics. Neither do I. In a similar way is it impossible to imagine that the people who do understand QM might be be unable to understand what lies “underneath” that? And under that? I know that you’ve convinced yourself that the universe is here for us to discover and understand but there’s really no rule that says that “humans must be able to understand reality’s true nature”. I hope we can, but I can see that it may never be the case.
So yes, nature may have laws that lie “beyond our ken”. And so? I’m surprised that you are arguing against that as I see (in a few decades time) that to be the final “gap” your deity will have to squeeze into, after every other gap has been illuminated by the light of actual (not received) knowledge.
There’s more than one accepted scientific definition of code. Code doesn’t have to mean “uses symbols as abstractions”. It also can mean be any process where the inputs and outputs are mapped to each other.
The genetic code doesn’t use symbols as abstractions. It falls under the second meaning.
That IDists continue to use this simple-mined equivocation over the definition of ‘code’ as evidence for ID is pretty sad.
You’re referring to the video?
I already told you we don’t know how the code originated, so asking for “experimental proof” at this stage is pointless. Since the video details a hypothesis for the code and translation system’s origin using known evolutionary mechanisms (mutation, drift and natural selection), that is basically it. An in principle explanation that works with what we know about evolution and molecular biology, and constructs a hypothesis for how the translation system and the genetic code could originate and evolve.
This doesn’t mean that you should believe this is how the translation system and code DID originate (and you’re not being asked to), it only means there is nothing about the translation system and the code that makes it logically impossible for evolution to produce it, as in – The translation system and the genetic code does not have properties such that it could not have evolved by known evolutionary mechanisms.
I don’t know what you mean by “Darwinism”. The video just works with “evolution” as it is currently understood to work and constructs a hypothesis on that basis.
Yockey didn’t set forth facts. Yockey set forth Yockey’s opinions that are shared by virtually no one else in the scientific community.
.And your unsupported opinion has value because…?
Unicode, of course. It’s of the devil.
Amen to that.
☃
What does this have to do with the topic of this thread? The OP asked for “one or more coherent scenarios”, not for “theoretical and experimental proof”. And given that real science doesn’t do “proof” in the first place, your question is, at minimum, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how real science works.
I went into some detail about this above.
here and here
cubist pointed out that positive definitions / descriptions (i.e. what a category has) are preferable over negative ones (i.e. what a category doesn’t have). Of course, any time we take the complement of a set, it is likely we may have one of each. In any case, my “category one” refers to natural process explanations based on natural law plus chance (but without any assisting guidance from the choices of a directing intelligence).
Actually, I would not call that “fine.” I don’t propose that merely having no idea how chemicals might function would be sufficient to warrant that inference. That would be merely an argument from ignorance. The point of the challenge is to see if there are describable scenarios that don’t conflict with our knowledge about the behavior of chemicals when left to act on their own.
Natural process explanations (law+chance) work great for many types effects that only involve order (supplied by law) or random unspecified irregularity (supplied by chance) or combinations of these. The nature of the challenge is to see whether such explanations can be reasonably expected to provide a coordinated system for the translation of symbolic information via an extrinsic code.
The key thing to notice is that the MANY examples of success for natural process explanations do not deal with this type of system. In fact, we don’t find symbolic information anywhere else in the universe, except in the translation of the cell and in the artifacts of intelligent agents. So past experience does not automatically extrapolate to this case.
Here again is a relevant quote provided by Mung.
Molecules aren’t symbols.
Eric, please note that, above, I have provided a plausible scenario for the evolution of the code, which does not seem to have been addressed.
Criteria of ‘plausibility’, of course, are in the eye of the beholder.
In brief, the possibility of ‘encoding’ (which really means making sure a particular amino acid ends up at a particular point in a growing peptide chain) arises from the base pairing properties of nucleic acids. First, you need them.
Like most IDers, you seem to regard the evolution of protein synthesis as contemporaneous with the origin of life. I do not think it was. I think nucleic acids came first, based (since we have no extant RNA-only life) on circumstantial evidence. Coded protein synthesis in this scenario originated first as noncoded protein synthesis. Coding and peptide bond formation are not necessarily coupled, but contingently so, due to advantages of specificity and a wider amino acid library.
And a side-note: the code is universal, albeit with minor variants. 55 of the 64 possible positions are completely invariant, and nearly all variation maps to a STOP codon in at least one clade, a phenomenon for which I can provide an explanation on request.
This paragraph is all well and good. Nevertheless, your ‘category one’ is still negatively defined as “everything that doesn’t involve intelligence”, which means it’s still a ‘junk drawer’ category, and therefore still as problematic-to-downright-useless as any other ‘junk drawer’ category.
Since the context here is the ‘chemicals’ that make up the ‘transcription system’ which is the focus of the question in the OP: Exactly what part of the behavior of these chemicals isn’t adequately described by the known laws of physics and chemistry? The ‘translation system’ is a mightily complicated set of chemical reactions, sure. Of that set of chemical reactions, which specific reaction-or-reactions (if any) can’t be accounted for by bog-standard chemical concepts like electronegativity and covalent bonds and yada yada yada?
If your answer to the above question involves the concept of “information”, well, I gotta tell you that I don’t believe there is any “information” in a DNA molecule.
Seriously.
An analogy: When hackers talk about computer code, it’s common for them to speak of what thus-and-such subroutine “wants to do”. This is a metaphor, a higher-level description which is employed to help other people understand the code without getting bogged down in the gritty details of floating-point representations and control flow and yada yada yada. It is not an indication that the subroutine actually possesses desires, and anyone who took the “wants to do” metaphor at face value, instead of gleaning the nonliteral meaning of that metaphor, would be doing themselves a disservice.
Similarly, I think that when biologists talk about the “information” in DNA, they’re using a metaphor to help people understand DNA without getting bogged down in the gritty details of ionization potential and entropy gradient and yada yada yada. And anyone who takes that metaphor at face value, instead of gleaning the nonliteral meaning of that metaphor, is, again, doing themselves a disservice.
If you don’t agree with my position (which seems pretty likely, seeing as how the information-in-DNA notion is such a prominent feature of pro-ID argumentation), please tell me: How the heck does that ‘information’ stuff get into a DNA molecule in the first place? Okay, fine, the Designer inserted that information into the DNA molecule. How? What physical procedure does the Designer employ when It’s infusing information into DNA? Or if the Designer isn’t using a physical procedure to infuse information into DNA, what the heck sort of procedure does the Designer use to infuse information into DNA? If this procedure (physical or otherwise) involves moving atoms around in some manner, well, unguided chemistry can move atoms around, too. So what’s the difference, information-wise, between (a) atoms that are arranged in some specific Atomic Configuration X that happened because the Designer shuffled all those atoms into place in accordance with Its ineffable plan, and (b) those same atoms, arranged in that same Atomic Configuration X, except that it happened because of mindless, unguided chemistry?
You’re going to have to establish that this “symbolic information” thingie is actually relevant to the ‘translation system’ found in living cells. Not presuppose its relevance, but demonstrate its relevance.
Has anybody found symbolic information in the artifacts of non-human intelligent agents? If not, be aware that your argument supports the proposition that the Designer must be a human being…
I hope you and others will be patient as my time is constrained. (Alan Fox decided to start this thread on his own. I don’t regret him doing so, but I do regret that I don’t have the time availability right now that I would like to have been free to give this.)
Please understand that my limited responses are not a reflection on your contribution. I just have a lot of plates that I have to keep spinning concurrently right now.
Leaving aside questions and quibbles about when it qualifies as “life”, I’m not aware of anything I’ve said that would exclude nucleic acids came first, etc. I’ve explicitly allowed one could assume the presence of DNA and RNA as a given. If it seems I’m focused on the topic of coding (for proteins), that is because I’m focused on coding and translation. So, if I understand you correctly, I don’t recognize the assumption you describe as anything I’ve assumed.
Well, that seems to be an issue of terminology and semantics. I believe commonly accepted terminology would now say there is a “standard” code (not “universal”) with variant or non-standard alternate codes. NCBI clearly acknowledges “genetic codes”.
But that is, as you say, an aside. What matters to the issues I am discussing is not how many positions are similar, but that the meaning of any position is not chemically required, even to the point of using the same codon for a STOP in one code vs. an amino acid in another codes. Such a difference would be a devastating disruption for interpretation of coded sequences, if the decoding convention did not match the encoding convention. (I assume you already saw that I linked to a post of my own comparing different uses of codons for STOP.)
I’m not sure whether you are using “encoding” in the same sense that I am. Whereas decoding goes from the coded sequence (DNA, mRNA) to amino acid sequence, I use “encoding” to refer to the creating of the meaningful coded DNA sequence (making it possible that it can be decoded into a useful amino acid sequence).
BTW, I appreciate your participation, regardless of whether you agree with me. I can tell you are interested in a meaningful conversation that sheds more light and not just heat. Thanks for your contributions.
That is a different question from the one presented as the challenge. This issue is not one of describing the existing, already functioning translation system in terms of physics and chemistry. Rather, the issue is whether or not it is reasonable to think that mindless natural processes would ever create such a translation system on their own.
This is actually another great question.
In a very short answer, the difference is the power of choice, which intelligent agents have but unguided chemicals do not.
Unpacking that a bit more, intelligence allows for the imagination of future possibilities with future benefits and the ability to choose to pursue those outcomes, even if the intermediate stages are nonfunctional and not beneficial. It allows the choice to pursue distant goals with intention.
To get an idea of this for yourself, just ask yourself wether there is anything that intelligent agents could construct that unguided chemicals on their own would not construct. Would you really expect, for example, that unguided chemicals would make your phone or your computer?
As soon as one realizes intelligence can create something that unguided chemicals would not create, that raises a valid and meaningful question. Is the translation system that all cells depend upon something that unguided cells would make? Or is it another one of those things that only intelligence would make?
That is the point of the challenge — to discuss whether it is reasonable to infer from what we know about chemicals and their limitations that unguided chemicals would make a translation system.
That’s nice. Nevertheless, your argument is that Intelligence is, for whatever reason, absolutely necessary for the creation of a ‘translation system’, such that it’s flatly impossible (or, perhaps, ‘merely’ so improbable as to be impossible-in-practice, which is rather a distinction without a difference, IMAO) for a ‘translation system’ to come into existence without an Intelligence having fiddled with the process somewhere along the way.
That’s nice. It doesn’t come within a country mile of explaining what the Designer is actually doing when It injects ‘information’ into a DNA molecule, but it’s nice.
So what? How do you get from ‘intelligence’ can anticipate future possibilities… to …and that’s how ‘information’ gets into DNA ? As the S. Harris cartoon has it, “You need to be more explicit here in step two.”
Is there anything a Designer can do to DNA which can’t be duplicated by mindless, unguided mutations?
In principle, considering the matter on a purely philosophical plane without regard to RealWorld evidence: No. I don’t think there’s anything achievable by intelligent agents which is flat-out, a priori 100% impossible for unguided chemicals to construct. Having said that, I of course acknowledge that, as a practical matter, there are some things for which it’s very unlikely indeed that said things could be constructed by unguided chemicals.
So I don’t have a problem with the concept that there exists a class of entities which fit the description in the absence of intelligent agency, Entity X is too friggin’ improbable to exist. But it’s one thing to acknowledge that a class exists, and it’s something else again to determine whether or not any arbitrary Entity X is, in fact, a member of that class!
The question at hand is whether or not An Unguided-Chemicals Origin For This ‘Translation System’ Thingie is sufficiently unlikely as to merit discarding that notion in favor of The Designer Did It, right? Yes, your whole argument is based on the presupposition (which may or may not be locked in, I dunno) that the Unguided-Chemicals option is that unlikely…
…but how do you know?
Exactly how improbable is it that unguided chemicals could construct a ‘translation system’? If you can’t answer that question, your whole argument here pretty much boils down to I don’t wanna believe it! And if I don’t wanna believe it! is all you got… well… why should anybody else give a tenth of a tinker’s damn about what you do or don’t want to believe?
If anyone is wondering whether there really exists a class of objects whose origin cannot be reasonably attributed to natural processes alone, please consider this question.
If you answer “yes” as almost anyone would, the affirmative answer is possible because and only because some objects cannot be reasonably attributed to an origin from natural processes. Notice also that even though the intelligence responsible for the objects would probably not be human, that is irrelevant to the inference. Likewise, our lack of knowledge about the details of construction would be irrelevant. We recognize a perceivable distinction between the Natural and the Artificial that rests solely upon the limitations on what we can reasonably expect natural processes to produce.
If you adjust it slightly to say, Some Designer Did It, you would have it just right! (Discarding the natural process explanation only establishes some designing intelligence.) I’m glad that our exchange has been fruitful in clarifying the question at hand.
It’s not a presupposition (i.e. not a premise the argument assumes beforehand). The point of the challenge is to put this issue on the table and let everyone examine and consider whether or not there are in fact describable scenarios that do not conflict with what we already know about chemicals, about cells, and about translation systems. (I claim that what we already know makes natural process explanations not reasonable, but the argument obviously cannot presuppose this.)
Even among those who hold that God is responsible for life, there is nothing new about the idea that God could have accomplished this by the indirect means of building into natural processes the capability of producing life. So the natural process option is not excluded even from that perspective. It is not excluded by presupposition.
One request I would make to everyone is to simply consider for yourself whether you have an implicit presupposition that requires that the translation system must be due to natural processes rather than the result of intelligent agency, i.e. that it must be Natural and cannot be Artificial and that therefore any perceived failure of natural process explanations must only be some reflection of our own ignorance. Such a presupposition would decide the matter beforehand regardless of any evidence, knowledge or reason.
Some Obstacles for Translation Systems via Natural Processes
For consideration and convenience of reference in replies before looking at individual proposals, here is a summary of some of the kinds of obstacles that proposed scenarios will run into.
Obstacle #1: The Complete Sufficiency of Existence Without Translation
Chemicals can exist indefinitely in innumerable configurations that do not involve any codes, symbolic information sequences, or translation, and yet they will nevertheless completely fulfill all the laws of chemistry and physics. We have never discovered in chemicals anything like a vitalistic impulse, or the desire to live, or even the ambition to invent symbolic information and translation. So there is a fundamental difficulty in appealing to natural laws to propel chemicals toward inventing a translation system when they already fulfill all of those laws without one.
As one example, it is a guaranteed fact that the chemistry of DNA is and must be neutral with regard to the order of nucleotides in the sequence that would provide symbolic information suitable for translation. No advance in knowledge will ever change this requirement of the medium. Yet, it is because of this that a random gibberish sequence fulfills the physical and chemical requirements on DNA just as would a sequence that could be translated into a protein. In short, the chemistry of DNA is ambivalent to the difference. And if random gibberish doesn’t lead to anything that could possibly be translated, so what? The laws that control chemicals literally do not care. The perpetual absence of translation or of life would not be a failure for chemistry.
Consequently, any proposed scenario would need to adequately address the sequencing issues for forming usable coded sequences. (BTW, don’t forget about details like STOP codes.)
Obstacle #2: The Need for Specific Engines for the Work of Driving Uphill
Allan Miller has provided a number of good observations about chemistry, including this one (emphasis mine).
While this is all true, in the current context the natural preference to roll downhill toward lowest-energy configurations is not an asset. It is a liability and an obstacle.
The ribosome is present in every cell. Yet it is also one of the most complex features of any cell, and it is only one part of the whole translation system. Regardless of any route one takes from simple chemicals to a completely implemented and functioning translation system, it is guaranteed that this must be an uphill journey thermodynamically. This is something we know and which no advance in knowledge can be expected to change.
Evolutionists lacking skepticism will hand wave the issue away from serious reflection with the inadequate observation that the Earth is an open system and there is plenty of energy flow. While that is true, merely having energy is not a sufficient condition for at least two related reasons.
a) Uncontrolled application of energy to a system is far more easily destructive rather than constructive. If you are trying to build something, uncontrolled exposure to energy can undo your progress.
b) Besides having available energy, it is also required to have a suitable engine that can harness that energy and convert it to the appropriate work that needs to be performed. If your car runs out of gas in the desert, it probably won’t do you any good to open your hood and let the energy from the sun flow into your engine compartment.
Enzymes (including ribozymes) can serve to convert energy into useful work, even toward climbing uphill in the entropic landscape. However, there is no such thing as a universal enzyme. Each enzyme has a particular shape that serves to accomplish the work of certain particular functions. There is no single build-a-translation-system enzyme, for example.
Evolutionists frequently make the question begging assumption that life evolved from natural processes, so any necessary enzymes must necessarily be available as the result of blind natural processes (we must simply not know how). Yet, when we strip away the question begging assumption, there is no such guarantee.
This becomes even more evident when we hold in mind that chemistry does not care whether it “succeeds” in making life. If a step would be necessary for life, that by itself carries no weight in considering whether chemicals can be expected to take it. This leads to the next obstacle.
Obstacle #3: The Permanent Inability to Consider Future Benefit
Blind physical and chemical process only operate according to the immediate influences (e.g. rolling downhill on the entropic gradient to find a stable low energy configuration). They cannot take into account that some “benefit” would be obtained by building a system.
As I’ve described, the translation system has many components and these components are typically useless with regard to their translation role if the other components of the system are not in place.
For example, the ability to translate an encoded sequence into a protein is useless if there are no such sequences with useful encoded information. Yet creating the accurately encoded sequences is useless for translation if there is no mechanism to perform the translation. Even having both is useless if you do not have the mechanisms to retrieve a useful sequence and supply it to the decoding mechanism, i.e. the two need to come together.
These are not minor details. They are obstacles to implementation by a blind process that does not care, especially when it means traveling uphill to get there. Since chemicals cannot pursue future benefit in order to build an interdependent system, any proposal that does not address the issues of interdependency in a translation system is not an adequate proposal.
Obstacle #4: The Fundamental Differences Between Cellular Reproduction and Prebiotic Replication
When addressing the above difficulties, evolutionists are prone to becoming careless about assuming that the perceived benefits of cellular reproduction are automatically available as soon as you have any type of replication, such as the process the can produce a reverse complement of DNA or RNA and then (when it is performed again) get the original sequence back again. However, there are fundamental differences that cannot be ignored.
When a cell reproduces, the entire genome is reproduced in its entirety. The whole sequence is duplicated regardless of whether a given portion contributed to making the reproduction occur. It is like a team sport in which the whole team, even the bench warmers, proceeds through the elimination competition if the team wins.
Prebiotic replication of strands is more like an individual sport. On an individual basis, any strand that is not as available for replication (e.g. due to being bound to something else) or not as amenable to replication (e.g. tending to form pseudoknot structures) will be less likely to be replicated.
One cannot merely transfer Darwinian assumptions about natural selection promoting life to a prebiotic realm and merely assume that the properties that would be promoted by individual strand replication are those that would lead to life. They do not even necessarily promote the creation of complex structures, since strand replication cannot reproduce the structure itself.
At its theoretical best, at most it can only more or less faithfully replicate individual strands that are not bound to any structure at all. It will inherently prefer to replicate those strands that are available and not bound (increasing their frequency), while tending to not replicate those that are otherwise occupied and unavailable.
Any proposal that simply assumes that the replication of individual strands will automatically tend toward the progressive creation of complex structures capable of implementing translation (and ultimately cellular life) is not adequate. It is making a question begging assumption that is not in line with what we already know about the nature of replicating strands of DNA or RNA.
Rumraket, thanks for providing your video on your proposal for the origin of the genetic code. I’m sorry that I haven’t commented earlier. I have wanted to give it the amount of attention it deserves, but I’m juggling availability and time currently. Thanks in advance for your patience.
Rather than delay comment further, for now my main comment from my impressions so far is that you are primarily addressing the associations found in the genetic code. But a full translation system includes much more than just the genetic code. (Even the genetic code itself is not a true code so long as one is still operating in terms of direct chemical attachments. So long as we are talking about A binds with B by chemical attractions, etc. I may have no objections, but also find it not yet reaching the level of translation.)
I’m wondering if you could please sketch out a bit more detail about your thoughts for the transition to stored sequences of coded information that must be decoded during translation to get back the realized amino acid sequences. (Don’t forget to discuss the use of STOP codes in those sequences.)
If you look at my previous post on the obstacles involved, you will have a good idea of the kinds of questions that I would want to ask about any proposal.
Thanks much for your participation and contribution.
p.s. If you think I’ve not understood correctly something you’re presentation already explained, I would just ask for your patient correction with some helpful details added. I wanted to at least give you some response sooner rather than delay any longer. I hope you will understand.
Thanks much for all the “prequel” chemistry. You’ve proposed much with regard to “the raw materials for the ‘final’ step”.
That said, I have to say that you’ve come to the threshold of my challenge without really crossing over. By your own description, much of what you’ve actually described doesn’t require a true code or symbolic translation at all. So, it doesn’t yet answer the challenge.
This is where I would ask for “a little more detail” about that final step, where the components that were created to serve some other purpose actually are reconfigured by a blind process to create a repository of coded sequences that can be decoded during translation into useful proteins.
Please see my post today on Obstacles. That will give you a sense of the nature of the issues and the questions I would want to consider with regard to any fleshed out proposal.
Thanks again for your contributions!
You go too far there.
Just looking on planet earth, I can see objects that give compelling indications of intelligent agency. For example, I would include bird nests here. They may only require bird-brain intelligence, but that is still a degree of intelligent agency. However, we do not conclude that bird nests “cannot be reasonably attributed to an origin from natural processes.” To the contrary, we consider the activity of birds to constitute natural processes (processes that occur in nature).
Is “intelligence” a “natural process”? If you think the answer is ‘no’, are you not arguing that ‘intelligence’ is supernatural?
Eric,
I stopped ‘at the threshold’, as it were, as much because my post had become overlong already … I’d spent so long on the groundwork that the finale was indeed something of an anticlimax!
Life
Just to get a definition out of the way: “Life”, to me is minimally any chemical iteratively self-replicating system. That is, from whatever chemical ‘seed’, a system that can organise raw materials into an independent copy of itself that itself retains this capacity of replication, such that further copies can be made. To do this takes energy, it is a given. It also needs metabolism of some minimal kind to form the bonds of the replicating structure.
All of this is in principle capable of being supplied by nucleic acids without any protein involvement.
Energy
Energy is, as you rightly say, at the heart of everything. But the issue of energy, the tendency of everything to just roll spontaneously down the energy gradients is, I should note, an enormous problem for any ‘atom-level engineer’. If one thinks that a minimal set of complex molecules is needed before Life can occur, and a designer is required, imagine trying to move these molecules into place without their interacting until the moment you want them to. This isn’t your argument, of course, I merely offer it as an observation, and a reason for my prejudice towards starting simple. Another observation: ATP, the central energy unit of the cell, is a nucleic acid base. That is, unlike proteins, nucleic acid subunits carry the energy of their own polymerisation.
Coding
Another point of issue is this one of ‘coding’. I use the term freely, but think that one can become swayed by semantic baggage into thinking it something it isn’t. When you talk of ‘encoding’, I don’t recognise the term in biology. I might concede ‘decoding’, as DNA triplets cause particular amino acids to be placed at particular locations, but nothing ‘encodes’ into DNA. You can place any stretch of RNA or DNA, from any organism, in any reading frame in any other, and turn it into protein, sliced up by whatever function as STOP codons. And this happens all the time – both sense and antisense strands, overlapping reading frames, bits of transposon, alternative splices, viruses … there are no parity bits in DNA. And traffic is all one-way. One could analogise a series of bits which would represent something in ASCII, without being encoded as such … but the engineer’s intuition that this would invariably be nonsense is another trap. Not all useful proteins are specific ones, and even ‘random’ protein space is bursting with function.
So…
What I understand you are looking for are the means by which a decoding system could arise.
Here’s what it needs, by ‘reverse engineering’ the modern system:
1) Aminoacylation of ATP – renders the following steps a ‘downhill’ reaction
2) Attachment of the aminoacylATP to a distinguishable carrier molecule.
3) Catenation of sequential carriers against an RNA template and formation of the peptide bond.
In modern cells, the first and second steps are accomplished by protein enzymes, which creates an apparent chicken-egg problem – but these do not have to be protein-catalysed. A 5-base ribozyme is known which will aminoacylate ATP, and all the second step does is transfer the amino acid from that lone ATP (an RNA base, as well as energy currency) to the terminal A of the tRNA molecule’s ACC stem.
Step 3 is obviously a complex process in modern cells. But the central reaction, peptidyl transferase, is ribosomally catalysed, and truncated ribosomes will peptide-bond truncated charged tRNAs with no coding requirement at all.
So if you will permit a replicating organism with no protein but the ribozymal capacity to aminoacylate ATP or a longer A-terminating tRNA-like fragment, and a smaller version of the ribosome that catalyses peptide bond synthesis, you have a simple system of noncoded peptide production. Is it any use? Well, why not? The organism has no urgent need of catalytic protein, but simple structural peptides composed of polymers of a single amino acid could readily find a role in the cell. If the only amino acid available is (say) Glycine, the organism can make polyglycine sheets. But where to start and where to stop? It may be better than nothing, but this system can be improved. You need something to control the size of these sheets. One way to do this (with hindsight!) is to feed through a length of RNA of the appropriate length and count off segments until you fall off. Another advantage provided by this RNA control tape is that the tRNA fragments can bind to it. This binding actually provides some of the energy required to make the peptide bond, by orienting the tRNAs correctly. Thus, manufacture is faster and more efficient. If this RNA is monotonous – polyG, say – it does not matter where the reading frame is, but it means that optimal binding is achieved when the tRNA has CCC at the corresponding site.
So we have our first ‘coded’ element. Except that it is hardly a code. It consists of GGG and 63 STOPs. But now we have a system that can expand. STOPs can become amino acid assignments; the fewer STOPs you have the better (but you need some). And gradually a more complex code can ‘crystallise’ out, until proteins become too embedded in cellular life to permit much change (such change as is minimally disruptive would be mostly at the trailing ends, where the STOPs are).
Let’s cut to the chase: What you’re really asking here, is this: Is it possible to distinguish Design from non-Design? The answer to this question is obviously “yes”. The problem for ID is, real science already has a perfectly good methodology for detecting Design, and thus far, ID consists entirely of bullshit in many flavors, said flavors including (but not limited to) “evasive” and “deceptive” and “fallacious” and “non sequitur” and “just plain unsupported”.
You think ID isn’t bullshit? Fine. What is the scientific theory of Intelligent design, and how can we use the scientific method to test this theory?
Of course. Forgive me.
Neil Rickert:
But the activity of humans is non-natural? Just asking.
No, that’s not where I got it. So you fail.
And then you claim that this supposed source I used was the original source, while at the same time admitting that it was not the original source. Fail x 2.
I’d say that the activity of humans is natural, and that intelligence is natural. ID isn’t so much about detecting intelligence-as-we-know-it as detecting some kind of bodiless intentional interference with natural processes that leaves no trace of manufacture.
The activities of humans are natural.
As with most words, we have different meanings for “natural”. In one possible meaning, actions of humans are not considered natural. In another meaning, they are natural. I was hinting that ericB should clarify what he means.
Thanks for this Allan!
ID-pushers make the argument that since intelligent agency is the cause of Thing X in every instance where the cause of Thing X is known, it’s reasonable to suppose that intelligent agency is the cause of Thing X in any instance where the cause of Thing X is not known. I think the reasoning behind this argument is bullshit, but okay, I can run with it:
In every known instance of Intelligence, that Intelligence is derived from a biological entity, so it’s reasonable to suppose that every instance of Intelligence is derived from a biological entity. Therefore, Intelligence could not have played any part in the origin of life, because biological entities did not and could not exist until after the origin of life. Also: Intelligence could not have played any part in the origin of any biological sub-system (translation system, blood clotting mechanism, etc etc) which is a necessary pre-requisite for the existence of Intelligence.
ericB,
ID/creationist misconception and misrepresentation #1.
This is a requirement tacked onto nature by ID/creationists. It involves at least two misconceptions and misrepresentations (1) that the life forms that exist on this planet are targeted assemblies that have specified functions; and (2) that some kind of “vitalistic impulse” or “intelligent input” is required for complex behavior to emerge from complex assemblies of atoms and molecules.
The simple fact is that neither of these assumptions, whether or not they are stated explicitly, is true.
This statement makes no sense whatsoever. You are reifying a metaphor about “symbolic information.” This isn’t how chemists and physicists think about the chemistry of anything.
ID/creationist misconception and misrepresentation #2.
Energy is supplied from the thermal motions of atoms and molecules, particularly water. Ratcheting of processes in a given direction is also driven by the input of energy, such as from ATP. If you cool everything down, things freeze and processes stop. In every case, the laws of thermodynamics are not violated.
If you can’t explain the temperature dependence of chemical and physical processes, you have no idea what you are asserting.
This statement is simply FALSE, especially at the nanometer scale with soft matter systems immersed in an energy bath.
This is a caricature that shouldn’t be worthy of a response. Car engines are not metaphors for what goes on in cells; nor are any other man-made machines. The work done in cells is not directed toward a purpose; but the behaviors produced are what we refer to as the behaviors of living organisms.
This is another bald assertion that is simply not true. ID/creationists have absolutely no idea of the magnitude of the interactions among atoms and molecules; they can’t even do a simple high school level physics/chemistry calculation that highlights the issue.
ID/creationist misconception and misrepresentation #3.
This is simply more gibberish; it doesn’t describe chemistry and physics at all.
Chemistry and physics don’t have to “pursue” anything; especially “future benefit.” This is just a made-up requirement of ID/creationism. So it requires no response other than to remind ID/creationists that they know nothing about chemistry and physics.
ID/creationist misconception and misrepresentation #4.
This assertion is another example of ID/creationist ignorance of the real chemistry and physics, as well as what scientists are thinking and how they are going about research.
This is a “Have-you-stopped-beating-your-children?” accusation. Nobody in the science community is making any such assumption. However, it is the case that chemical pathways can be determined by probabilities and contingencies. Some environmental conditions will produce things that simply don’t occur in other environments. ID/creationists don’t appear to be aware of any of this.
More gibberish. Where did you learn your chemistry and physics?
Here is that little high school level physics/chemistry exercise that every ID/creationist, including Henry Morris, has failed (this represents a 50-year history of ID/creationists failing at things that high school students can do).
Here is the exercise.
Scale up the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and electrons to kilogram-sized masses separated by distances on the order of a meter. Then calculate the energy of interaction among such masses in units of joules and also in units of megatons of TNT. Then throw in the rules of quantum mechanics.
In the light of your answer, justify the ID/creationist use of tornados in junkyards, junkyard parts, scrabble letters, battleship and auto parts, and other inert objects as stand-ins for the behaviors of atoms and molecules.
If you cannot do this exercise – especially if you can’t even imagine how to begin it – then you have no clue about what chemistry and physics can and cannot do; and you certainly have no idea about how silly your “challenge” looks to people who know things you haven’t bothered to check out before you made all your assertions.
So here is a real challenge for you; do the above exercise and then rethink your assertions.
Why do you think computer parts are stand-ins for the properties and behaviors of atoms and molecules?
What are the charge-to-mass ratios of the parts that go into making a computer, or a house, or a car, or a battleship, or any other technological device?
If you were to scale up the energies of interaction among the atoms and molecules that are in the assemblies of the complex molecules of life; if you were able to scale up those energies to the masses that make up the parts of, say a car, what would those energies be?
Do you see any rules of quantum mechanics going into the assembly of a car?
Try that little high school exercise and then explain why computer parts, or car parts, are like atoms and molecules.
Seriously, ericB, if you want to issue a challenge to “evolutionist/materialists,” make it a challenge that actually has something to do with the real world; not some made-up caricature of nature that has nothing to do with reality.
Do that little high school chemistry/physics exercise; then rethink your “challenge.”
Getting back to the OP:
I say that cells don’t contain any ‘information’, ‘symbolic’ or otherwise. To repeat a point I raised in a previous comment, any real scientist who talks about ‘information’ in cells is employing a pedagogical metaphor rather than describing a factual state of affairs. Therefore, cells don’t need or have a “system for translating symbolic information into functional proteins”, so what ericB has ‘submit’ted in the OP is simply not relevant to actual biology in the RealWorld.
Accordingly, I say that ericB has been making the mistake, at great length, of reifying the ‘information in cells’ metaphor. When I pointed out to ericB that the boring, mindless laws of chemistry and physics are perfectly adequate to describe the internal workings of cells, he agreed—but if cells actually do contain ‘information’, that ‘information’ can and should affect the internal working of cells in ways which cannot be described by the boring, mindless laws of chemistry and physics. So the fact that boring, mindless chemistry and physics can describe the internal working of cells is a fatal blow to ID, because chemistry and physics aren’t enough is the whole bloody point of ID!
What do you mean by natural? Do you mean that intelligence is only matter/energy? Or is an “emergence” of matter an energy and then no matter and no energy but other “stuff”. Which is the meaning are you giving to the word “natural”?